Select Committees and Parliamentary Scrutiny

Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94. My name is Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm here in the iStudio with Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop. If you're watching this, you may have already voted in the local elections , you might even know the results. But one really interesting thing about the whole campaign is that so much of it has focused on what we would think of previously as the edges of British politics on right and left, reform in the Greens. Uh it seems increasingly quite hard for the Conservatives and Labour, traditionally quite big. You've missed out the Lib Dems again. I'm sorry Which is the theme of the campaign. Literally the Lib Dems are complaining our polls, they were consistent. No one even mentioned us. Yeah. It's very unfair. I mean I'd mentioned them. Is th is that a fair summary, Helen, or is it I think that the Greens and Zach Polansky have taken up a vast majority of the oxygen in these campaigns for a very good reason. A lot of the seats that are being defended are Labour seats that are kind of green facing. Some of them are reform facing. They expect to lose a huge number of seats. So that's almost been kind of factored in at this point, right? The story, if if Labour even do slightly better than you think, everyone will kind of fall about themselves with sh with shock. I'm bracing myself for a both reform and green saying the mainstream media underrated us, but look how well we've done. This will be a lie if they say this. I just don't say this. Everyone expects them to do incredibly well. And one of the things I found most interesting, I was reading um Jim Wharton's very good newsletter, London Centric, in which he referred to the fact they'd got their hands on last year Reform's local elections playbook, their canvassing handbook. And one of the things they'd say to their candidates are let Nigel deal with the national issues, you just focus on on Eul es or whatever it might be on potholes on the housing estate that no one once built, whatever it might be. That's one thing. And the other thing is don't post anything on social media. At all. Don't think that this is now your time to air your thoughts about the Middle East Peace Process. And so I think having been through that megastorm of lots and lots of reform candidates being found out to have unpleasant views, they they something the party is is very aware of as a problem. The Greens are further back on that learning curve , I would say. So we have two people who've been arrested on allegations of anti Semitism, one of them seen campaigning out for the Greens after that. You have the Greens deputy leader, Mothin Ali, saying to people who've been accused of anti Semitism, you know, get think about challenging the party on this, you know, we shouldn't give in to these smear campaigns. So that fight that the Corbyn era Labor Party went through in the years twenty fifteen to nineteen is now happening in very much the glare of publicity for for the Greens. We should say, of course, this is in the wake of the Golders Green stabbings and you know renewed focus on anti Semitism in in British public life. It was prior to that as well. I mean it was very obvious even prior to the stabbings in Golders Green last week that th there was a concerted kind of campaign of violence and intimidation against the Jewish community. So there were firebomb attacks on um most notoriously the the ambulances, but also a couple of attempted arson attacks at synagogues in in North London. So it was quite clear that that sort of stuff was going on. And even prior to the Golders Green stabbing, Zach Polansky came out and said one of the most idiotic things that we needed to be wary of whether this was Jewish people feeling unsafe or whether it was just a perception they had of unsafety, which some I mean there's quite a lot of clear evidence in there and firebombs attacks. I would feel quite unsafe. Yeah, and the and the stabbing outside Heaton Park uh synagogue in Manchester as well. I I mean if you look at the figures, the Jewish community in Britain is very small and it is enormously dispropor tionately affected by hate crimes. There isn't a synagogue or a Jewish school out there that doesn't have security round it, that doesn't have walls. You know, and I think this is a community that has felt that it has been living in fear for a really quite a long time now. Now every party, I would say, has had its own problems with anti Semitism in in its ranks. I don't know about the Lib Dems actually. They uh they may have managed to dodge it, I'm not sure. Uh but certainly uh this w was a problem in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. Th there seem to be lots of cre dible evidence this is now a problem in the contemporary Green Party. Again, one shouldn't f forget that the leader of the reform party had had quite a well publicised incident uh during his school days um which twenty four people gave evidence about and which has now been dismissed and it's considered bad taste to bring it up, so I thought I would. But it's not entirely gone, has it? And re form candidates mostly now are being discovered to have Islamophobic or uh whatever you want to call it tendencies. But there was a period where they were pretty anti Semitic. Yeah, I think it's an interesting insight into the evolution of anti Semitism in Britain is that it was the casual prejudice of choice, well one of them, on the right in the in the sixties and 70s. And since then it has been yeah, there are still neo-Nazis out there, but it has also now become associated with a particular left-wing form of anti-Semitism, which bleeds into some things that are legitimate. I mean this is always the problem with everybody draws their line in a different place. But it it bleeds into criticisms of Israel, particularly the Gaza war, and also some of the tropes on the left about uh, you know, a global elite or a one percent or billionaires. And some of those are perfectly legitimate and then some of those go into Rothschild's uh you know, Il Illuminati, protocols of the Elders of Zionist controlled government and then it gets closer, you know, and closer and closer to overrank anti Semitism. So I think that that is you know, there has been an evolution in where you would imagine the prejudice would come. And for the right, as you say, and the the the people who are now to be afraid of are are Muslims and you will hear all these tropes about a Muslim invasion of Europe, you know, these idea of kind of armies of rapists overtaking us. And so the kind of poles of of the kind of the racism have switched. The far right are very keen on Israel now. Um so alongside the St. George flags, you had demonstrations where there was St. George Oh and the State of Israel. That's a long way for British fascism to move, which has been, you know, pretty solidly anti Semitic right the way through. Now it isn't. Tommy Robinson was invited over to Israel, wasn't he by by I think the President's Office. Which is he's an extraordinary kind of fusion uh of people. But there's another thing I've noticed was really interesting is the sort of bandwagoning uh by the right onto this anti Semitism, blame that all on mus Muslim um communities as well, uh which goes along with it, you know they are being made the scapegoat for absolutely everything by by the right. But the the idea that anti Semitism in this country has somehow been imported in on the small boats and uh and and it it's another migrant it's a migrant community who are who are who are completely to blame blame for that as well, which is sort of equally inaccurate. I mean uh Keir Starmer, I know, is trying to make the point at the moment that this is this it's self-evidently a massive problem for society and it's something that we should all be ashamed of. Uh and to kind of move it off Right. Now I wasn't on the podcast last time. So can I just check? Is this all just an attempt by you three to have another go at poor old Zack Polansky, who is doing his best under very trying circumstances to offer hope and change ? Damn it, he's speechless. Just facing this sort of sneering cynicism from the media. Is that the first one? Well, okay, so uh uh just to give you a a glimpse behind the scenes while while you were away, um probably doing actually something actively green rather than uh the the stuff the Green Party's more into these days. Um w uh we got criticized by Zach Polansky for not understanding the appeal of the Greens. Uh and Ian stands indicted of the crime of saying they don't seem to talk about environmentalism very much. They are more a left-wing populist party. And I I I know, and remember this as the uh I live in Lewisham, which is a contest between Labour and the Greens, as the green leaflet, big picture of Zach Palansky on the front, dropped through my letterbox. Can you guess how many times environmentalism was mentioned in that leaflet, Andy? I'm gonna say double figures at least. You're gonna say none, because it was none. It was about their populist economic proposals, the fifteen pound minimum wage, for example. And the way that Zach Polansky phrased this in his interview with the Times essentially, well, paraphrased by decorating there for him, was everyone knows that they're in favour of green issues. That's fine, that's sort of taken as a given. So actually they're gonna talk about cost of living issues instead. One of the things I found quite unpleasant was the fact that um Rachel Millwood, the Green the other Green Deputy Leader, apart from Moth and Alley was on question time and she was asked about the gold as green stabbing and the rise of anti Semitism and she attributed it to the cost of living crisis. And I think that is yeah, I know. And I was another random scapegoat. There was a yeah. But but it's basically like austerity's made a lot of people feel, you know, very angry. Um what struck me about that is that is a mirror image of things you will hear from reform supporters who say essentially it's very hard not to be racist these days because you know, all these people coming home and taking our jobs, right? And that in both cases there is this idea that economic insecurity is a kind of gives people a sign-off essentially for finding a scapegoat. And I was quite surprised to hear that the Green Party deputy Can I just say at this point I would like to be unpopular on all fronts uh and say that um there is classically a a problem with Islamism and anti Semitism. I made a documentary about anti Semitic precedents and ended up, you know, witnessing the Cairo Book Fair and this is a couple of years ago, where they're actively selling Mein Kamp and uh a lot of cartoonists in Arab newspapers literally would not get published anywhere else um on the grounds of anti Semitic tropes. So we can't ignore it. And I think it is it is worth saying that the eye has tried, which is usually a a failed policy, um of saying we are against um Israel's behaviour in Gaza, but we're not very keen on anti Semitism. After our Gaza c over, there was nothing but letters saying, you know, the eye is absolutely anti Semitic. Despite um the number of literally every issue we write about anti Semitism online , um Elon Musk , uh all of those things. But we do run pieces saying guess what's happening in the West Bank? It's not great. Dr. Grimm runs those pieces. So attempting nuance is unacceptable in the new bipolar world. Um and that makes this issue even worse because everyone deliberately you say you know the the borders between the two get confused. I think they're deliberately confused by people who want to play in that And you've had experience of this a lot over the years because of the the acid test of the letters page. Yes. You know. And whoever's complaining most. is new, as Zach Balanski undoubtedly is at the moment, someone that seems to be offering something different. Before mass disillusionment has kicked in, as happens in every single political career, it's part of the process. Yes, and uh people are furious and they write letters and and it used to be um the Scots Nats, they would they were easily the most prolific and bad tempered letter writers about any mention of Nicholas Sturgeon at all , any suggestion that anything in Scotland had gone wrong in any way was just, you know, Sasanac, winging um and you know, sort of uh what do you want Boris then. UKIP originally you've never seen so many letters. Um the Boris cult, any mention of him, particularly the overflowing lav atory suggesting that was his legacy. I think there was a staggering. That was the c coverover, right? That was a with a literal toilet on it. I I wanted to complain about that guy, but just because of it. It was so horrible. Yes, it was horrible. Um But the volume is and the greens are out now. Yeah. Um they are very, very offended by any criticism of Zach and any criticism of themselves. And I think it's when you get this rush of popularity, it doesn't occur to you that the thing that comes next is accountability because you might be in, and by the time I say this he might well be in charge of a party that's running a lot of councils. People are going to ask you things. And if they ask you things that you don't like or you don't particularly want to answer, that doesn't mean they're mainstream media smear merchants. I mean you've just got to get beyond that. Otherwise, you know, you end up saying I don't want journalism. I I think about all the people we've had in politics in my lifetime , there has been a real difference between what you might call the populists and the the mainstream. The mainstream just m moan a lot less about journalism, right? And that's one of the things that is I think is very different about them. Well w there was a there was a very fun piece uh last week I think in The Economist analysing thirty five thousand likes by Zack Polansky on Bluesguy, which is his social media platform of choice. I mean he's he's filming all the time, he's writing all the time, and he's on it all the time, clearly and, he will like anything that mentions him positively, and he will also like quite a lot of stuff that's incredibly rude about anyone who's who's been even slightly critical of him. And it's j I just I don't have time to like thirty five thousand things But that speaks to what he's very good at, which is content creation. He's very he he's very visible. He turns up, he you know, he he's pushing out his mesh mesh message. These are things I will give him credit for. Is that that is part of the role of party leader now. It's something that Kirstarmer is obviously failing at and terrible at. What does Kirstarmer th think we're going and how does he think we get there? Very hard to tell you now even. Like he's just not communicating those things. Zach Clansky is I mean I think it's all completely different to what he believed ten years ago and he's never really accounted for how he's changed his mind, but we certainly know what he's doing. He's apologised to Jeremy Corbyn. That's the one thing that he's apologised for is essentially the the Labour Party being too tough on the U.S. And he was fooled by the propaganda. What the Lib Dem propaganda No the propaganda around Corbinism. Oh I see. The idea that there was any an any anti Semitism in the Labour Party. Yeah, he's that's the bit he's apologised for. Yeah. really interesting with the Greens that they were very good at at expelling people for was expelling gender critical feminists. So Shahar Ali in fact took the party to court and where he felt that they had discriminated against his lawful views. So I would say, yes I would take the fact that there has been a huge intake of new candidates and their vetting has been delayed by that. However, I would say it is also reasonable to say you had a very bright line about what views on sex and gender you were not per mitted in this in this party and as a political party that is your right. There's not an imposition in free of free speech. People that hold those views are just are not compatible with being in the Green Party, sure. However, you are I think more reluctant to do this on views about anti Semitism and I think the rest of us are allowed to comment on that and disagree with it actually. And when you talk about vetting, I mean when Farage said I I don't have time to vet these candidates, I thought well you could knock off two hours in the pub um and read the He's got spare time now, he's not doing his cameo videos anymore. He's he can get up at five o'clock in the morning and do a bit of vetting and stuff. And the same with Zack, rather than dress up in green clothes and pose for the Sunday time green photo show Before we move on from this bit, we should say just a a little bit about exactly why Nigel Ferrar has been able to afford to give up doing videos on Cameo for seventy five quid a time. He's the only person who isn't. Wh was not taxed from Christopher Yep. And I believe billionaire. I did a little calculation, just in case you're interested. Uh Keir Starmer could have bought uh two Surely Mahin Ali could have bought that many pairs of glasses for Kirstar. Sorry in the same. In fact, that is the total in the whole glasses gate. It was it was it was many, many more pairs of glasses than that you could get. This does not seem to have attracted the attention that I think it ought to. Um Farrell's got in very early with a a defence. Uh y you know exactly how that happened, didn't you Helen? Well so the uh the Guardian who had this story, according to them, um went to them for comment on it. Uh and the according to the Guardian, the reform press office stalled them and said we need more time then they said or you directed it to the wrong press officer actually and in the meantime a uh uh a very sympathetic piece I think written by Gordon Raynor in the telegraph appeared with the headline I was firebombed and this was lots and lots about By Farage. By about Nigel Farage being firebombed and this was lots and lots about Nigel Farage's security issues with then very long way down going and in order to resolve these security issues I accepted this gift. One problem with that, I think you you spotted the problem, didn't you, Andy? Yes, it's a timeline thing, which is that the the fire the firebombing, the um attempted arson attack on on Ferraris's home, which I we d we don't need to say, probably should say is, deplorable. Shouldn't happen in the world. Yeah, we're all against it. That happened uh one year after Farage accepted a a five million pound donation, which is apparently something to do with his security. So either Christopher Harborn is a psychic or crypto really is so good that it can predict something that's gonna happen in a year's time, or that actually doesn't really stack up. And it was also a gift made when Farage was not an MP. So they are saying look, this is completely irrelevant. But I love this this is always the argument with donations that aren't declared, isn't it? Is that technically it didn't have to be declared and in this case the excuse is it was the point where he said he was never coming back as a reform leader and he was done now, and Richard Tice was going to take over. And it's just so clearly, I mean, to use a parliamentary term, complete bollocks, isn't it because if if you're in hockey someone for five million pounds, if someone is giving you five million, clearly, on principle, that is something you need, if there is a register of interests, that is an interest . I mean, this is the same argument that that our old friend Peter Mandelson made first resignation time around when he said he didn't think it was relevant that that he owed £3 73,000 to another cabinet minister at that point because he'd been he'd been lent it by Jeffrey Robinson to buy a house in Notting Hill. Clearly it's a relevant interest. You don't have to you don't need to kind of pass it and go into accountancy terms of exact technicality. And if it comes a few months before you announce not only that you're you're going back into frontline politics and also that you think this crypto stuff is fantastic and there should be much lower taxes on crypto transactions. And later on Farage has said that he's invested nearly three hundred grand in a company that buy and hold Bitco in. Yes. You're suggesting that two and two equal four. Yeah I am, which I'm sure in crypto world is not true due to something clever, but they do. Yeah. And I love Nigel Frog's phrase that he's never lost Crystal Harbaugh has never asked me or anything. He gave you five million pounds personally and seventeen million pounds to the party. He doesn't need to ask you. You know what . You know what you do with that, don't you? And also there is the obviously the amusing irony that the leader of a party that complains about foreign people having influence over British politics is now uh you know the largest recipient of the largest amount of money ever um by someone who's resident in Thailand. Yeah, I think Nigel Farage is recreating the worst bits of MAGA. The involvement in crypto, which is just a deeply scammy industry. I would I would say any serious politician really should stay away from it. And they should stay away from prediction markets, they should say, you know, just that they should stay away from gambling And organized crime and those sort of things. I I would say. Running a sex ring, all of these things I would I would recommend that they often turn to shade into dodgy business and I'm against them. But um You're so radical. I'm so right wing. Um but the thing the other thing is that uh Zia Yusuf announced um on Bank Holiday Monday this he he essentially this sort of like weird prisoners' dilemma where he said, We're going to do mass deportations, we're gonna build migrant hotels and we're gonna put them in places that vote green to punish them. So if you don't want one in your place, vote reform. And I'm this literally comes with a website as well where you can put in your um postcode and it will tell you where you're y it looks like you're gonna vote reform , so you won't be getting one, or it looks like people are going to have green in your area. You will be getting it on your doorstep. I mean it's it's the I can't think of another situation in an election where there's been a sort of outright threat with menaces like that. Can you? I mean there's the usual sort of bribery and kind of we will cut your taxes and that kind of thing. But an absolute if your area goes the wrong way, then you're in trouble, mate. If you vote green, you're gonna get more potholes and we're gonna cause them. But they think it's very clever, right? They think it's a trap that the left has walked into, which is like, oh I see, you don't like migrant hotels. I thought you thought refugees were welcome. Now that is very true of a a tiny subset of the Green Party who do believe in completely open borders. But actually there's a lot of people vote in Green for a lot of other reasons, including cost of living and economic reasons. But who you know who don't feel like that. But this again I think is the mega trap. Donald Trump, no squish on immigration, has pulled back from p pulling crying children out of the streets, right? Like just bundling people into cars, bundling them off to El Salvador or wherever it might be. Because actually it looked cruel and unpleasant and people didn't like it. Even his supporters were not you know Stephen Miller gung ho about it, his effective chief of staff, um well his effective Prime Minister. But but mostly this was not a popular party. And he sank the person in charge. And Greg Bovino, who was swaggering round in a very righty coat, I would say, uh got yeah, got his marching orders. So, you know, this just I I I I think this is this is a I thought that that was a really unpleasant announcement. Obviously there's a million ways in which it didn't work. You know, the places that Greens are gonna win will be inner cities. If you think you can build anything in most places that elect Greens. Also if there's one thing that unites every part of the political spectrum in Britain, it's NIMBYism. People just hate anything being built in Britain. Like good luck with that. But it was also it was just it was just an odd punitive as you say, like a sort of punishment beating for not voting for us. In in a way that I think you're right crossed a line that I hadn't crossed before in British politics. And there is a long tradition in in British politics of of telling the voters you're going to give them free money. Hogarth onwards, you know, our satirical tradition is rich with just politicians saying, Would you like something I'll give it to you? They don't usually say, vote for me or else. That that's different Right now uh we come on to the state of the media. And there's been a report about the uh the press freedom index, which is a global uh report about how free the press is in all sorts of countries. Normally you're used to seeing it if you do see it in the context of lot more people banged up in Uzbekistan this year. Uh journalist I mean. But obviously, Adam, it also features the UK. Because the UK is part of the global community. It is, it is one of the one hundred and eighty countries that were recorded in this report. The World Press Freedom Index, uh which is issued by Reporters Sans Frontier, which older readers will remember is the international version of um it's a knockout. Uh for the kids there. Um and obviously there was an awful lot. I mean generally it was it it was a bad view. Um it was the lowest average score they've ever recorded across the globe in terms of press freedom. Right. Um a lot of that was down to um journalists being killed in various uh uh conflict zones and other places around the world, two hundred and twenty journalists more than that now I think killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. Um a lot in Sudan and South Sudan as well, they noted. Um but I thought um because we're very very parochial, uh we are UK based, we could have a look at what they said about the UK. Now the UK fell two places, uh it's still recorded as satisfactory, rather than good. It's the eighteenth most free press in the world, according to reporters on Frontier, which is not bad. Do you want to know who's good? I can tell you. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Scandinavia are doing fantastically. Very good. Uh Estonia and uh and the Netherlands were the one were the ones who were graded as good. But we came in just as satisfactory. Is there anywhere graded outstanding? There is not, so far. Good is as good as it can get. Okay. So satisfactory is is is pretty good. So why so we've slipped did you say we've slipped a couple of rungs? Slipped a couple of rungs, yeah, yep, yep. Uh not as n not doing as badly as the US, which has fallen seven places , uh specifically because of Donald Trump and his uh his his kind of uh MAGA movements uh constant attacks on the media. Okay. But the specific reasons they gave for the uh the the UK deteriorating slightly all the problems with the uh with the UK, one of them very specific, um attacks on exiled Iranian journalists who are broadcasting from over here and threats to their family, uh back families back in Iran to try and stop them um putting out what the uh anti-reg ime news. Um but they also noted uh a few other things. Uh the rise in online abuse of journalists and uh the government's failure to act as promised on slaps, which of course are strategic lawsuits against public participation, which uh any eye reader will know we've we've covered in great detail along the way. So we we've we've gone in specifically on um Mohammed Mercy's uh extraordinary range of uh legal threats against um Charlotte Leslie, uh the former Tory MP, uh uh who he pursued through the courts, as I say, in in in several different ways over se veral years, uh, for having temerity to put a memo out to eleven people containing some information about him. So those are generally rich people shoving down journalists through the courts. In a lot of cases, yeah, yeah, yeah. Another one was Tom Burgess, who was actually the journalist who in The Guardian last week uh exposed the Christopher Harborn uh donation to Nigel Farage, we mentioned him earlier. Uh but he put a book a book called Kleptopia. Uh this case was thrown out as wholly flawed by the judge in the end, but it was brought by a Kazakhstan based mining company. So, you know, these are the sort of, you know, it's people with a lot of money behind them who really don't want any of their activities written about. So there have been lots and lots of those. Now the government did promise um ahead of the election that this was going to be one of their priorities, that they were going to bring in legislation to stop this kind of thing. There was a kind of phalanx of media lawyers, the Society of Media Lawyers was created, which is lots of people from uh firms that uh I readers will know and love, like Schillings and uh Carter Ruck. Yeah. Terrible, um a terrible, terrible thing to uh restrict our uh our clients' right to uh legal representation. And their right to shut down journalism . Yes. Which um uh if you are a very, very rich person, it never seems to occur to you that that that isn't one of your fundamental human rights, that any criticism of yourself should stop. Um and there's always lawyers who were prepared to do that. Um but it did look as though this battle was being won. And there were brilliant books about, you know, um Russian autocrats that managed to survive um you know really good work, really good journalism. And suddenly we seem to be rowing backwards again. Right. And the Labour government, which I know I shouldn't take seriously what they wrote in the manifesto, it's just silly of me . But I think I believe they might do this. Yes. And they still say that they will do at some point. But unfortunately what's happened is that they've uh put in a working party which involves a lot of these same media lawyers who are lobbying very, very hard uh against it and um it sort of got kicked into the long grass as being something that's a bit difficult. I would say it was one of the most popular things they could possibly do if they want want a curry favour with newspaper editors. It's it's it's a slam dunk this one, isn't it? And boo foreigners, you know, it goes down pretty well. I mean why why not extend it to rich foreigners? Yes, who is pro Kazakh billionaire? What is the constituency for that in Britain? Quite small The other thing, Adam, I wonder if it came up um I was judging the Paul Foot Awards this year and really great entries as ever, um and we'll see who wins. But one of the things that struck me again was that particularly with the the local papers, the regional press, there's been some brilliant diversification onto Substack um and the the That absolutely was one of the other things that came up in this in this report uh in in in in in the press freedom interest. Uh they say the budgetary pressures have left many outlets forced to close their newsrooms or drastically reduce staff. And at the same time, you're absolutely right. There are these sort of independent um uh uh outlets which are coming out and still doing fantastic journalism, a lot of which is recognized every year in in the foot awards as you say. Um so Mill Media, who is one of these uh i in independent athletes who are doing a lot of very, very good journalism, have faced down all sorts of legal threats. Most recently in the last week, uh they uh had a threat from um uh a spad to Shabana Mahmoud, the Home Secretary, over a story they were doing about her, which was very definitely in the public interest, threatening them with an injunction on the grounds of libel, which um if you know anything about law, that's that's that's not how it works. Libel very pr the principle is absolutely there of publish and be damned. So uh story went ahead anyway. It stops people following up the story, right? That's that's the reason I always think for those legal threats. If it's someone small does a story, they get this heavy handy legal response, and everyone else who might follow it up then like backs off a little bit. Well there is an absolutely classic method which we've seen millions and millions of times with stories that we run in the Rotten Burroughs column, which then local papers try to follow up and are told by you know the press office or for the council concerned or or wherever, oh yes, no, that was very inaccurate and we're taking legal action against private eye. And occasionally they will phone up, phone us up and say, are they? And so no, we haven't heard a Dicky bird from them at all. But that that threat is enough. Um can I just ask Adam, the press freedom uh people, do they have anything to say about who owns the telegraph? I just I've been so worried about it. They did. Did they? They well no, what they did point out was that one of the problems with the UK media for as far as they're concerned is that there are just three companies who dominate the market. There are of course News UK, Reach and the Daily Mail and General Trust. Now, actually, that would have been even more of an issue because it looked for a while like the D uh DMGT were going to take over the telegraph as well. But in fact we have now plural more plurality in the UK media, so we're going to go up the twenty twenty seven index presumably because Axel Springer have come in from Germany and uh and taken over the telegraph. So yes, it was in there. So this is a win for press freedom. Pr press diversity. Ah yes, okay. Yeah, yeah. Slightly different thing. Every time you've said Axel Spring, my brain has supplied Axel Foley, of course the protagonist of Beverly Hillscope. Well I'm choosing Spring that Eddie Murphy has taken over the telegraph. That would be much more entertaining, wouldn't it? Certainly. That's that's going to have a substantial effect as well. There are going to be a lot of lot of journalists on the jobs market, basically. And th there's no clear rationale for for why these journalists have been suddenly culled during It was just yeah, we need the money now. We're not gonna salami slice, which is the traditional B BC uh we're just gonna cut. The only thing offered was well with uh the license fee, we're you know, no one's paying it, we're not collecting it. Right? I mean there is a remedy for that. I mean I get it. Um attempting to lock up very, very poor people for not paying their licence fee doesn't look good. But arguing um as the government uh that um you have put this licence fee in place because you believe it is worth it. Might be worth trying. Right. Do you know what I've never felt more pro BBC than I don't know if I mentioned any, but I've just been to the Galapagos. Um sorry. Once again, I think that yeah, the BBC do loads of stuff I don't agree with, but actu on the international uh spectrum as well, you know, there are now Starlink terminals being smuggled into Iran so that people can get the BBC World Service and the BBC Persian service because they are reaching a huge number of the adult population. And I think it's something that all of the BBC's trials and tribulations here don't really reflect is is what the BBC is still managing to do around the world. So I went to an event organized by Hostage International which um uh offers support to the families of those who've been kidnapped and and tries to sort of uh make their life better in whatever they can do and offer help and advice and and this event was about the kidnapping of John McCarthy, who was very famously um kidnapped by an Iran backed group um in the Middle East and he spent five years as a hostage but he was talking and the number of of references to the world service um involved in his account and the others account should have made everyone in the audience ashamed . Um both for the hostages, you know, um they denied them radios when the the Americans got a radio. John heard his friend talking about him. The first time in two years he had proof that anyone cared that he was still alive. But the effect on uh the warders, the jailers, uh the other people in the region listening, the idea that the BBC World Service is some um embarrassment. I mean, we've got aircraft carriers that don't work. Um we've got uh a soft power radio station that works unbelievably well. We're gonna cut that. I mean it's extraordinary. And very noticeably that has been noticed does work. So what floods in to fill the gap is as you know, it is Russia today, it's Sputnik, it's those things that come to directly Kremlin front funded propaganda outlets and you know China has similar similar operations of kind of n news going around World War. So with the world service being cut back here, Trump cutting funding for for NPR and the Voice of America and all those kind of things. You know, this stuff does matter. Yeah, tough times for all the people who have been funded by Viktor Orban in Hungary. Like the the people on the on the on the right very well aware that it is a good idea to fund friendly media organisations. And then maybe yeah Britain should say, Well, we've got some values of our own actually and one of them is objec th this idea of objectivity, which we aim for. Mabey we should fund that. Anyway, here concludes the party political broadcast in favour of the BBC. Great. I'm hearing a lot of pro-journalist propaganda here I love it. I know. Read Street of Shame next issue to find out how awful they all are as well. Now, having been so nice about journalists. We're gonna be nice about you. No. We're gonna be nice about parliamentarians, aren't we? We yeah, I just thought it would be worth doing a little section about one of the bits of the British political system that works. Which bit is that, Andy? The camp team. Cross charging pavement solutions. Don't even get me started. I go away on holiday for one week and the government makes a big announcement saying we're going to make this a permitted thing and look out for legislation coming later in the year. I'm gutted. I hear they're calling it Andy's Law. It is a win though, Andy, isn't it? It's well let's w I'm not gonna get too excited. I I'm keep it I'm keeping the um the carver on ice but if this government promises it's gonna happen , boom, it happens. Exactly. And then there's a quick U-turn at the end of the cold attack and they come right back the other way. Look it looks like it might happen. That's not what I wanted to talk about. But the bit that d has been working and I think is worth highlighting is something I've been um trying to go along and and look at, which is the um the Transport Select Committee. So for those listening who don't know, there are all sorts of select committees on on major issues in British public life. They are made up of MPs whose job is to run investigations, look at the issues that are is their particular patch, and eventually come up with a report and recommendations. So I've been going to the transport select committee. They have uh one of their running investigations is called supercharging the electric vehicle transition about is it working, is it not? So they they take evidence. And it just for anyone whose normal experience of politics is seeing the occasional snippet of Prime Minister's questions , it is a completely different side of the experience and so much more uh interesting. and constructive Oh I love a select committee. Do you remember the some of the great select committees around the time of um the phone hacking, for example? They were Baha'i drama. Um Margaret Hodge used to do I think the public accounts committee, one of the one of the ones that scrutinizes finance. And it was it was incendiary sometimes. And what you tend to do is yeah, okay, so there are some idiots who just sign up to them for whatever reason 'cause they want a grandstand and there is a bit of this isn't so much a comment a question as a comment, which is the plague of public life. But normally you get MPs who are genuinely enthused and interested and knowledgeable about a topic, and they're getting in front of them people who are also enthused and interested and knowledgeable about the topic. This is it. And the the thing I found really interesting is the difference between the bit where it's the committee of MPs interviewing just sort of subject experts. You might get someone from a big charging company or you might get someone from a local council and say like what what are you concerned about or what's going well? And then the political bit. 'Cause on the in the last session you had uh the minister responsible who's uh Keir Mather, MP who you th you might reckon. He's a child. Yes. He's twenty eight. He's he's very young. Um he was very impressive, you know. But he had to change his name to Andy Matha soon, 'cause obviously it's gonna be quite anyway. Yeah. Um but that that slight ly changed the the nature of it. But even then, I mean this committee is mostly Labour MPs because most MPs are Labour MPs. Well select committees are um the the membership is reflective of the the state of the parties in the House, is no. Reasonably proportional, you know. There there is a Tory, there are there were a couple of Lib Dems on this committee. But the the interesting thing was they they were not noticeably kinder to him because he was a minister in their party. I mean th like some of the toughest questions about whether this thing is working or not came from the other Labour MPs on the committee. There wasn't too much grand standing or party digs. There were one or two, but mostly it was very collabor ative, you know. I mean there are fun things about it. Like it the first session I went to, ten minutes of it was completely inaudible because uh Angela Ripon was running a dance class outside with the speaker of the house. Oh yeah, I saw the pictures of that. It was in Port Cullis House. What you didn't see was all the committee rooms around the centre of Port Cullis House where people were just saying, Well we don't know what's being said here and maybe maybe it's relevant So would you say the transport committees were better than the select committees that looked into the Mandelson Gate saga? Well, I committee wasn't which is chaired by Emily Thornbury, who really not very happy at not not not being put into the cabinet at the last election and and and made that quite apparent. It was the way to describe that. There was very little diva given on the Transport Select Committee. Maybe when these things are a bit further from scrutiny, you know, they they're allowed to just get on with the job. No, because I I felt you know the Foreign Affairs Select Committee had identified some of the big problems, such as Peter Mandelson shouldn't have been appointed, you know, which I wouldn't have had a clue about unless they'd had at least twelve sessions. Are those helpful those that that comments? No sorry. No, those those select committees where it's it's a big public thing, all the all the phone hacking ones, are they doing a different thing? There is quite a lot of ground selling. I mean famously Keith Fows when he was in charge of the home affairs committee was very into a celebrity guest. So you would tend to get sort of um Russell Brand turning up uh back in the day and a and and pontificating for for several hours or well Keith tried to get himself in the in the in the camera frame as well. So there is there are a lot of criticisms to be made of this process as well. But there are in fact so many of these select committees that a lot of them still are doing a lot of good business. I would say just say, well we're on this congratulatory thing, just slightly self-congratulatory. I think Gavel Basher, uh uh one of our parliamentary correspondents has an absolutely brilliant job of of not focusing on the Chamber and the and and Prime Minister's questions and that kind of thing, and getting along to a lot of these select committees and along to the House of Lords' Chamber as well, which is another of the areas that's sort of overlooked and ignored by the the general daily coverage. So Right, 'cause the Lords, as far as I see it, they were the ones who really um ended the assisted dying thing. Absolutely. Right. They just ran into the sand in into in in the Lords consistently. But I think it is actually quite useful occasionally to restore your faith in democracy. In the same way that every year I find that judging the poor for towards restores my faith in journalism. Because yes, there are a lot of show ponies who are very irritating and in everything and doing much better in their careers than me, which is wrong and shouldn't allowed. But also there are are people who doing like just unglamorous heavy lifting work and that's what you see at the select committees do. And it does not get less glamorous, I can tell you, than maybe half an hour of questions about the electric vehicle excise duty which you know that you've got to be interested to be presumably absolutely vital in the sense that we could be having a flood of cheap Chinese electric vehicles here and they are sort of essentially barred from coming over, right? Like Oh they're not barred at all. They're not barred at all? No no, no., So tell us what's happening. Oh well it's the one of the most revealing comments made was does the government have one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake when it comes to this? They've decreed that by twenty thirty all new cars have to be electric in some element, whether that's full electric or with a bit of hybrid. That's coming up quite soon, you know, it's coming up within a few years. Is the country ready for it? Are we ready for petrol taxes to drop off as people make the switch. There is a range of opinion on display in the committee. You know, experts are saying slightly different things depending on what they want. You know, someone who runs a big charge point company obviously wants more big charge points. Someone who's trying to represent electric vehicle drivers is saying, Well, we just want to make it convenient, so maybe we just need you know, to make home charging easier even if you don't have a driveway, all of this stuff. Yeah. business because she only asked questions about electric coaches and whether you know coach tours are going to be able to electrify, which I would say is not the main element of the committee, but that's not it's not for me to say, you know. And the thing of whether it's paid for is a potential stumbling block by this Eved , which is you're gonna be charged three P a mile to drive an electric car. That's gonna be done it seems like in quite a laborious way with having to take it in for an MOT, declare your mileage, get that checked . It sounds like faff the way it's currently being pitched. The government's response is, well we we think we have to replace petrol duty with something, which is true. We're giving lots of notice so people can get ready for it . And there are various projections about whether it will stop people going electric or not. All of these committee sessions were happening before the evidence has come in from the war in Iran, petrol suddenly becoming very unaffordable. So it's quite hard to tell what what is going to happen next. Yeah. Without that. Your feeling was that MPs were making themselves better informed and increasing the amount of information about this issue they had on hand. Which does sound good It's really good. Even even when there were opinions being given that I you know I disagreed with, that the MPs are asking and drilling down into the details of all of it and you know, trying to get to the bottom of it before they issue their report. We've got to get away from this drilling down metaphor. Charging up, I'm not sure. Yeah. They were really plugged in. They were plugged in. There we go. Yeah. Can't wait to read the report. I'll be staying up late, you know, on the night before that. I can't wait to read your report of that report, even private eye. And so much more, if I can stress that, uh including the Port Foot Awards shortlist a and and so much else in the next issue of the magazine. That will be out on newsstand soon. You can just buy it in your local shop or you can go to private i.co.uk and get a very reasonably priced subscription. That's it for this episode though. We'll be back